Apostasy Momen

Religion 37 (2007) 187e209
www.elsevier.com/locate/religion
Marginality and apostasy in the Baha’i community

Moojan Momen
Abstract
During most of Baha’i history, there have been both marginal and apostate Baha’is. This article is about
a group of articulate and well-educated marginal and apostate Baha’is who first appeared in the West about
twenty-five years ago and who reached the peak of their activity in the last decade. The group’s campaign
against the Baha’i community brings to mind Max Scheler’s description of the apostate as ‘engaged in a con-
tinuous chain of acts of revenge against his own spiritual past’. Following a terminological, methodological
and ethical discussion, this article examines the phenomenon and makes six points. (1) These apostates seek
to reverse the status of the Baha’i Faith from that of an ‘allegiant organisation’ to that of a ‘subversive’ one,
or a ‘cult’. (2) The experiences of the apostates form a dark mirror image to those of the core members. (3)
The Internet has been used extensively by these apostates to create a community of their own, thereby as-
sisting the passage of many of them from marginality to apostasy. (4) This community has developed its
own mythology, creed and salvation and has become what can perhaps be called an anti-religion. (5) Apos-
tates have written papers and books that have been accepted by academic journals and presses. (6) If re-
ligious communities want to avoid facing attacks by apostates, it is necessary to act at an early stage of
the process, as it is almost impossible to do anything later.
Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
In the last two decades there has been much literature on the subject of apostasy and margin-
ality. This article focuses on apostasy and marginality in the Baha’i religion.1 Following a brief
discussion of some theoretical, methodological and ethical points, this article analyses a collection
of sixty-six exit narratives, or statements made by those leaving the religion about why and how
E-mail address: momen@northill.demon.co.uk.

1
I am grateful to Michael Stausberg and Robert Segal for their comments. I also want to thank Christopher Buck,
Robert Stockman, Will van den Hoonaard, Peter Smith, Armin Eschraghi, Susan Maneck, Todd Lawson, Iraj Ayman
and Peter Terry for their help.
0048-721X/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.religion.2007.06.008
188 M. Momen / Religion 37 (2007) 187e209
they left. The careers of twelve apostates are then described in detail. There follows an analysis of
apostate narratives, mythology and issues. Finally, the special features of apostasy and margin-
ality in the Baha’i community are outlined.
Some confusion has arisen out of different uses being made of the word ‘apostasy’. In the 1980s
the word was used to apply to those who left a religion, particularly the religion of their birth.2 By
the late 1990s, however, the word ‘leavetaker’ or ‘defector’ was being applied to anyone who sim-
ply left a religion. According to the sociologist David Bromley, the word ‘apostate’ now referred
‘not to ordinary religious leavetakers . but to that subset of leavetakers who are involved in
contested exits and affiliate with an oppositional coalition’ (Bromley, 1998b, p. 5). This narrower
definition is the one used here.
This article is not the place to discuss at any length why people become apostates. But the findings
of this article do fit well the description of ressentiment, a term that was taken from Nietzsche and
was developed by the German social philosopher Max Scheler (1874e1928). Although Scheler’s
work has been criticised for elitism and excessive nationalism, his insights into human motivation
and particularly into ressentiment remain penetrating and perceptive. In his introduction to Schel-
er’s Ressentiment, the sociologist Lewis A. Coser has summarised Scheler’s concept of ressentiment
thus: ‘Ressentiment denotes an attitude which arises from a cumulative repression of feelings of ha-
tred, revenge, envy and the like.. Ressentiment leads to a tendency to degrade, to ‘‘reduce’’ genuine
values as well as their bearers. As distinct from rebellion, ressentiment does not lead to an affirma-
tion of counter-values since ressentiment-imbued persons secretly crave the values they publicly
denounce’ (Coser, Introduction to Scheler, 1961, pp. 23e4). Applying the phenomenon of
ressentiment to the apostate, Scheler writes:
An ‘apostate’ is not a man who once in his life radically changes his deepest religious, polit-
ical, legal, or philosophical convictionsdeven when this change is not continuous, but in-
volves a sudden rupture. Even after his conversion, the true ‘apostate’ is not primarily
committed to the positive contents of his new belief and to the realization of its aims. He
is motivated by the struggle against the old belief and lives only for its negation. The apostate
does not affirm his new convictions for their own sake, he is engaged in a continuous chain of
acts of revenge against his own spiritual past. In reality he remains a captive of this past, and
the new faith is merely a handy frame of reference for negating and rejecting the old. As a re-
ligious type, the apostate is therefore at the opposite pole from the ‘resurrected,’ whose life is
transformed by a new faith which is full of intrinsic meaning and value. (Scheler, 1961,
pp. 66e7; see alternative translation in Coser, 1954, p. 250)
The term ‘marginality’ has also undergone a change in usage. In the 1980s, it was used for those
who had become inactive in their religious community (see Albrecht et al., 1988). By the 1990s,
however, those who were merely inactive members were now said to be ‘peripheral members’.
The term ‘marginal members’ was now reserved for those who were still members but who
2
For example, throughout Bromley (1988a,1988b), apostasy is used in this way. Only Hall’s last chapter in the book
(Hall, 1988) uses ‘apostasy’ in its later meaning, and here Hall feels constrained to apply an adjective to clarify his
meaning: ‘conflictual apostasy’. Some sociologists, such as Hunsberger (1983), Brinkerhoff and Mackie (1993), and
Sherkat and Wilson (1995), have limited their use of ‘apostasy’ to those who leave a religion to become nonreligious
altogether rather than to attack the religion they have left or to join another religion.
M. Momen / Religion 37 (2007) 187e209 189
were expressing dissatisfaction, attacking either the doctrines or the practices of the group or ral-
lying disaffected individuals (see Barker, 1998, pp. 76e83). ‘Dissidents’ would be an equally good
name and is probably more precise. Between the core member and the marginal there is, of course,
a spectrum of positions, and it is not easy to define at what point one becomes a ‘marginal’. By
contrast, the boundary between a marginal and an apostate is more clear-cut. At some point,
a marginal individual either resigns membership or is expelled. If that person then intensifies
attacks on the religion or its leadership, that person becomes an apostate.
Most recent research on apostates has concentrated on apostates from New Religious Move-
ments (NRMs). Thanks to the levelling effect of the Internet, the phenomenon of apostasy has
moved from being the concern of specialists in NRMs to being the concern of many other scholars
of religious studies as well. Apostate sites are rapidly springing up for every religion, church or re-
ligious movement. Thus there are Muslim apostates, Christian apostates, Catholic apostates and
so on. And so it is no longer a phenomenon confined to NRMs. Indeed, the phenomenon of apos-
tasy has a long history. In Christianity most persons are familiar with examples ranging across the
centuries from Julian the Apostate to Bertrand Russell, but often forget that figures such as St Au-
gustine were themselves apostates, vehemently criticising their previous beliefs. Apostates have
also occurred in modern times from Islam (Ibn Warraq) and Hinduism (Bhimrao Ambedkar).
While apostasy and marginality in the Baha’i community share many features with apostasy
and marginality in other religions, the degree to which Baha’i apostates have used academic media
to further their aims is unique. Even more distinctive is the attempt to depict the Baha’i commu-
nity as a ‘cult’ e a ‘subversive group’, in Bromley’s terminology e at exactly the time that the
Baha’is themselves are trying to position the community as a mainline religion, as an ‘allegiant
group’ in Bromley’s terminology (see Bromley, 1998b). The degree to which an apostate mythol-
ogy has been created, together with the degree to which the Internet has been used to create a
virtual community of marginal and apostate Baha’is, is also notable.
The Baha’i community
The Baha’i Faith was founded in 1863 by Baha’u’llah (1817e92). It had been preceded by the
Babi movement, founded in 1844 by the Bab (1819e50) in Iran. Official Baha’i sources estimate
the number of Baha’is in the world as ‘more than 5.5 million’ (Baha’i World, 2006, p. 295). The
World Christian Database (2007), which has continued the work of the World Christian Encyclo-
pedia, lists the total number of Baha’is as 7,684,618. This source lists Baha’is in 220 of 238
countries e a global spread second only to that of Christianity.
Throughout its history the Baha’i Faith has experienced a number of significant episodes of
marginality and apostasy. Although it would be instructive to review the early episodes of apos-
tasy in Iran in detail, they differ significantly from the episodes in the West in that the Baha’i Faith
in Iran has always been in a state of high tension with society, thus falling into Bromley’s Type III
category, a ‘subversive organisation’ (see Bromley, 1998c, pp. 23e5).
In the West the Baha’i community has been trying to establish itself as a mainline religion, or in
Bromley’s terminology an ‘allegiant organisation’. Since the 1920s, the Baha’i community has
been striving to achieve this allegiant status e for example, by seeking official recognition of
Baha’i marriages and of exemption from attendance at work or school on Baha’i holy days, by
making legal incorporations of its local and national elected councils, and by obtaining charitable
status.3 The Faith has been more successful in achieving status as an allegiant religion in some
places than in others. In the United Kingdom the Baha’is are one of the religious communities
routinely invited by the British Government to formal state occasions and government consulta-
tions. In Germany the situation has been worse, as will be explained.
In general, the Baha’i community has avoided the charge of ‘cult’, a charge to which many
other religious groups were subjected at the height of the anti-cult hysteria of the 1970s and
1980s. The religion has various features that militate against this accusation. The morality it
preaches is traditional. Converts are encouraged to maintain their ties with their families. Con-
verts are not kept in any long-term communal residences. The outlook is not strongly dualistic:
those who are not ‘us’ are not considered necessarily bad, and those who are ‘us’ are not always
deemed good. Those who wish to leave can do so freely. There is a strong leadership, but it is
largely vested in elected councils rather than in charismatic leaders. Individuals are free to hold
their own theological opinions as long as they do not press them to the point of schism. In Brom-
ley’s typology, the Baha’i Faith has generally been regarded in the West as an allegiant organisa-
tion or, at most, a contestant organisation.
All groups create their own identity by creating meanings distinctive for the group. Groups create
their own cosmos or culture. To be a member of a religion is to share its meanings, its hierarchy of
values and its ordering of realities. For Baha’is, the meaning that is imposed upon the world consists
of a belief that, in the present state of the world, the only salvation for humanity is to move on to the
next stage of its social development, the unity of humankind and the emergence of a single global order:
‘The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens’ (Baha’u’llah, 1983, p. 250). For this order to
emerge, an individual’s source of identity has to change from a solely national, racial, religious or eth-
nic one to a global one. Hence the strong impulse in the Baha’i community towards unity. A religion
that claims to be trying to unite the world cannot be effective or credible if it is not itself united.
The collective identity of the Baha’i community is based upon the idea that it is in possession of
the most appropriate answers to the problems of society. These answers include a number of pre-
requisites to the establishment of a global society and world peace e for example, the abolition of
extremes of wealth and poverty, the elimination of prejudices through education, and the promo-
tion of the social role of women. The creation of a democratic and egalitarian community is con-
sidered a model for the creation of a global society.
Most Baha’i practices are carried out in private, such as prayer, meditation and fasting. There
are few public rituals. Baha’i communities get together every nineteen days for a meeting that has
a spiritual part (usually prayers), a communal part (community news and consultation) and a so-
cial part (food and sometimes music or a presentation). Most Baha’i communities have other
meetings, such as devotional meetings, children’s classes, youth groups and study classes. There
are no religious professionals or individuals in positions of power. Authority rests with elected
councils at the local and national level.
Part of the process of creating a group identity is the creation of group boundaries. The
political scientist George Schöpflin states that ‘identity excludes and includes, otherwise it would
not be an identity that could sustain itself. Exclusion, then is a necessary and unavoidable aspect
3
See the section The World Order of Baha’u’llah in successive volumes of the Baha’i World, 1980.
of human existence and it is not the fact of exclusion as such that is problematical, but the
particular forms of it in particular situations’ (Schöpflin, 2001). In general, the stronger the sense
of group identity, the stronger the boundary distinguishing the group from society. In some ‘New
Age’ movements, for example, the group boundaries may be very porous, so that individuals can
enter and leave the group with little effort. These groups, however, have a nebulous group iden-
tity. By contrast, the Baha’i community has a strong collective identity and, consequently, has
strong boundaries.
A number of features of the Baha’i Faith give it strong boundaries. The first is the existence of
laws that Baha’is are obliged to obey. These laws are not nearly so pervasive as the Islamic
Shari’ah or Judaic Halachah, but they do include such injunctions as daily prayers, fasting and
abstinence from alcohol. These laws both create boundaries and strengthen group identity. The
laws relating to the individual are not communally enforced. No one enforces the fast or daily
prayer upon an individual. There are, however, a small number of laws with social implications
that are enforced, such as the marriage and divorce laws. Coming up against the enforcement
of these laws can lead persons to leave the Baha’i Faith, but most of those who depart thus do
not become apostates. Rather, they usually assume the role of a leavetaker, sometimes even
expressing regret for a failure to live according to the high moral standards of the group (see
Bromley, 1998c, pp. 27e9).4
The second element of the Baha’i Faith that ensures strong boundaries is the concept of the
Covenant. There is little in the way of a creed in the Baha’i Faith. All Baha’is are encouraged
to read their scriptures for themselves and to come to their own understandings. What prevents
the religion from fragmenting is the loyalty that each Baha’i is expected to have to the head of the
religion, which since 1963 has been an internationally elected council called the Universal House
of Justice. While all Baha’is can have their own views of their scriptures, no one is allowed to
claim an authoritative understanding. The Universal House of Justice itself tends to refrain
from making theological statements. It is mainly concerned with making strategic and organisa-
tional decisions. It may, however, make rulings where there are disputes among Baha’is, especially
when there is the fear of schism. This loyalty to the centre of the religion is the doctrine of the
Covenant, and for Baha’is the greatest spiritual crime is ‘covenant-breaking’, which means,
attacking the head of the religion or seeking to create schism.
The third element that ensures strong boundaries is organisational. In the Baha’i community
there are mechanisms that guard against individual Baha’is attacking the central institutions of
the Baha’i Faith and creating schisms. Individuals are appointed in each community as ‘Coun-
sellors’ and their ‘Auxiliary Boards’ and assistants. These appointees encourage the community
to propagate the Baha’i Faith and to carry out the plans of action inaugurated by the Universal
House of Justice. They also function to maintain unity in the Baha’i community e partly by
keeping an eye out for those who may be acting in a manner to create disunity or schism in
4
An example of a leavetaker expressing regret for a failure to live according to the moral standards of the Baha’i
community is that of an individual who was in a relationship with a woman whose husband was away. When the hus-
band returned, the relationship was brought before the local elected council of the Baha’is, who instructed the woman
to go back to her husband. As a result, the man left the Baha’i community but comments: ‘I think that they [the Baha’is]
have something very important. I still believe in the faith.. It took me about six months to leave, but I just couldn’t live
the way they wanted me to’ (Jacobs, 1989, pp. 45e6).
the community. These wayward members are advised and warned on several occasions. If they
persist, they may be subjected to sanctions, which range from removing their name from mem-
bership lists to declaring them ‘covenant-breakers’ e a state of excommunication. Baha’is are
prohibited from contact with covenant-breakers. This extreme sanction has probably been used
against no more than a handful of individuals in over two decades and against only the first of
the apostates described below more than twenty-five years ago, although apostates imply that
excommunication has happened frequently. A covenant-breaker can be reinstated, and rein-
statement has occurred.
The stress on strong group boundaries has not always been the case. Under the second leader of
the Baha’i Faith, ‘Abdu’l-Baha (head of the religion from 1892 to 1921), group boundaries were
fairly porous, and even dual affiliations were permitted (Western Baha’is retained membership of
their churches). It was in the 1920s and 1930s, as the administrative order of the Baha’i Faith was
set up and as it became necessary to create membership criteria in order to draw up electoral rolls,
that the boundaries became sharper and stronger (see Smith, 1987, pp. 111, 122, 145e6). There
are indications that the Universal House of Justice may now want to move the Baha’i community
back towards a more open and inclusive kind of community, as will be discussed.
No worldwide statistics on the number of leavetakers from the Baha’i community have been
published, but a 1999 report for the United States alone indicates that the number is of the
same order as that for other religious groups (see National Teaching Committee, 1999). No exact
figures for apostates are available, but an estimate would be that the number of active apostates in
the West of the kind described in this article has probably not exceeded twenty-five at any one
time, with possibly a hundred who are actively and publicly taking a dissident position as mar-
ginal Baha’is. This article will argue that the number of apostates has probably increased in
the last quarter century because of the impact of the Internet.
Method
For this article, a collection was made of sixty-six exit narratives from three websites.5 From
these narratives, twelve individuals were identified as apostates, in that they have gone beyond
merely an exit statement to a prolonged campaign against the Baha’i community. Nine of these
apostates had had identifiable careers as marginal Baha’is prior to their exit. Although I myself
have met a few of these individuals, the accounts of them given below are largely taken from their
published and online statements.
One of the problems encountered in producing this article is the question of identifying apos-
tates by name. Some who have researched in this field have felt it necessary for ethical reasons to
hide the identity of these individuals (see, for example, Jacobs, 1989). The individuals in the pres-
ent study are all highly articulate, and most of the material has been gathered from their state-
ments either in published work or on Internet e-mail lists and sites. By publishing work either
in printed form or on their own websites with their names given, these individuals have effectively
waived their right to anonymity. I have decided to name only these persons (since it would be
5
These were http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/Ex.htm; http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/andorra/514/;
and http://www.bahai-faith.com (all accessed between 18 and 25 June 2006).
impossible to cite their published work without naming them) and not to name those individuals
whose e-mail correspondence alone is being used, who are named on another person’s website or
where they have used pseudonyms. This approach has been used by other researchers (see, for
example, Carter, 1998, pp. 221e37; Johnson, 1998).
Apostates 1980e96
During most of Baha’i history, there have been both marginal and apostate Baha’is. This article
focuses on a particular kind of marginal and apostate Baha’i that first appeared in the West about
twenty-five years ago and that peaked in the last decade. This group of twelve individuals is dis-
tinctive in that it is articulate and well educated. Six have published denunciations of the faith in
articles and books in academic venues. The twelve are also distinct from other apostates in Baha’i
history in that most of them are not trying to achieve leadership of the Baha’i community but
rather are trying to undermine the present leadership.
Chronologically, the first person among this group was a Swiss ex-Baha’i named Francesco
Ficicchia (b. 1946). He had been a Baha’i from 1971 to 1974, when he declared to his former fel-
low Baha’is that ‘you will from now on have me as an embittered enemy who will fight you with
all possible means at every opportunity’ (quoted in Schaefer et al., 2000, pp. 32e3). He then vac-
illated for some years, appearing at times to be about to rejoin the community. Eventually, in
1981, the Evangelische Zentralstelle für Weltanschauungsfragen, the central office of the Protes-
tant Church in Germany for questions of ideology, published Ficicchia’s book, which attacked the
Baha’i Faith (see Ficicchia, 1981). His book was deemed an academic textbook on the Baha’i
Faith. In a foreword to the book, Michael Midlenberger describes the work as the ‘first authentic
and at the same time critical presentation’ and calls it a ‘comprehensive critical presentation’ that
could ‘scarcely be surpassed’ (Ficicchia, 1981, p. 13). Despite the fact that Baha’is considered the
work a ‘distorting mirror’ of their religion with ‘almost everything’ being ‘twisted and disfigured
beyond recognition’ (Schaefer et al., 2000, p. 1), the work was warmly welcomed in the German
academic world and was reviewed approvingly by scholars of ethnology and Arabic studies such
as Henninger (1983) and of religious studies such as Klimkeit (1984) and Schumann (1985). Ficic-
chia came to be regarded as the ‘proven expert’ on the faith (Schaefer et al., 2000, p. 3, n. 7), and
his book was called a ‘standard work in the field of religious studies’ (Henninger, 1983). The work
soon found its way into encyclopaedias (see Waldenfels, 1987) and general academic works (see
Jäggi, 1987). Ficicchia himself continues to publish attacks on the faith (see Ficicchia, 2001,
with bibliography).
Ficicchia’s book harmed the standing of the Baha’i community in Germany. During the 1980s
the anti-cult hysteria was at its peak throughout Europe and America, and Ficicchia painted a pic-
ture of the community as a typical ‘cult’ e this while the Baha’is were attempting to establish
themselves as a mainstream, or allegiant, community. At first, they decided to ignore Ficicchia’s
book, thinking that rebuttals would only draw attention to it. After a time, however, they began
to see its effect on their relations with government officials (see Schaefer et al., 2000, p. 7 n. 27).
The atmosphere created by the book was partly responsible for an adverse decision in the German
courts over the registration of the bylaws of a local Baha’i council because those bylaws were
deemed to contravene German law. Only in 1991 did the Federal Constitutional Court in
Germany overturn this decision and declare the right of the Baha’i community to be legally
recognised in the shape ordained in the scriptures of the Baha’i Faith. The Court stated that
the faith was a recognised religion, as confirmed by its inherent character, by public knowledge
and by the testimony of scholars of comparative religion (see Baha’i World, 1993, pp. 160e1).
Only belatedly in 1995, did Baha’is publish a detailed rebuttal of Ficicchia’s work, accusing
him of plagiarism, disinformation and distortion (see Schaefer et al., 2000).
Concurrently with Ficicchia in Germany, a British apostate, Denis MacEoin, began to write
academic articles attacking the Baha’i Faith. He had been a Baha’i from about 1966 to about
1980. He had lectured at Baha’i conferences and at summer schools and had written in support
of his religion. He departed after clashes with the Baha’i administration. His first apostate articles
(see MacEoin 1982, 1983) were published in, of all places, Religion! At the time MacEoin was a lec-
turer in Islamic Studies at the University of Newcastle (see MacEoin, 1982). This article was
rebutted by two Baha’i scholars, (see Afnan and Hatcher (1985)). MacEoin’s (1986a) reply
prompted a further round of exchanges (see Afnan and Hatcher, 1986; MacEoin, 1986b).
MacEoin later published an article claiming that there was a ‘crisis in Babi and Baha’i studies’
(see MacEoin, 1990). By this time MacEoin no longer held a university position. This last article
was occasioned by a critical review of one of MacEoin’s articles by Juan R.I. Cole, who at the
time was a Baha’i but who later took much the same position as MacEoin. This article also led
to a further interchange (see Cole, 1991; MacEoin, 1991). Using academic media, MacEoin like
Ficicchia, attacks the Baha’i administration. He, too, has also attempted to paint the Baha’i Faith
as ‘fulfilling most of the criteria for a cult movement’. Having presented the persecution of Baha’is
in Iran as similar to the anti-cult movement in the West, he declares that ‘anti-cult agitation serves
as a device to define, quarantine and possibly eliminate deviance that threatens to disrupt social
order’ and opines that when the West wakes up to the reality of the Baha’i Faith, it will also treat
the Baha’is as a ‘cult’ (MacEoin, 1989, pp. 24e7). His attacks continue (see MacEoin, 2005).
The move from core to marginality
While both Ficicchia and MacEoin were marginal Baha’is before becoming apostates, they
were not part of an organised marginal group. The sociologist Eileen Barker has observed that
marginal members find it difficult to contact and network with other marginals (see Barker,
1998, p. 85). This isolation has been particularly true of the Baha’i community, which until recent
years has tended to have a deliberate policy of dispersing itself in order to spread the religion, so
that the community has been thinly spread. Therefore marginal individuals have in the past had
difficulty meeting one another and forming networks. But this situation changed with the advent
of the Internet.
The creation in October 1994 of a university-based Internet list called Talisman, created by
a US Baha’i university professor ‘AA’, started a change. The list was set up as a forum for aca-
demic debate but soon became precisely the network of ‘core members, peripheral members, ex-
members and non-members’ that Barker describes as necessary for the spread of dissident views
and for the formulation of the position of marginals vis-à-vis core members (see Barker, 1998, pp.
85e6). Scheler expresses this idea more forcefully, writing that ‘the spiritual venom of ressentiment
is extremely contagious’ (Scheler, 1961, p. 48). Through this medium the marginals have been able
to create a community of dissent, to build ‘plausibility structures’6 that support their positions,
and to engage in debates that have gradually moved many of them to more extreme positions
and eventually to apostasy.
The discussions on Talisman were sometimes heated, with core members opposing positions
put forward by marginals and ex-Baha’is on the list. There is some evidence that the extreme po-
sitions put forward by some of the list participants were causing disquiet to the Counsellors and
their Auxiliary Boards, who are charged with guarding against schism in the Baha’i community,
and that they privately contacted Cole and some other list members in the autumn of 1995.7 The
discussions on Talisman might have gone on indefinitely but for an episode that occurred on 7
February 1996. Unknown to the majority of the participants on Talisman, a group of marginal
Baha’is had set up a separate secret e-mail list called Majnun. On 7 February, ‘AA’ accidentally
put on the Talisman list a posting intended for the Majnun list. What made the posting notewor-
thy was that its content revealed that the discussion on Majnun was centred on finding a ‘winning
strategy’ for the marginal Baha’is.8 In most religious groups this goal might not have been signif-
icant, but the functioning of the Baha’i community strictly forbids the formation of parties and
sects, especially those with a partisan political aim.
The revelation of the existence of a secret group with perceived political aims spurred the Coun-
sellors and their Auxiliary Boards to act in what for them was a new situation. They appear to
have decided to ask one of their members, who had himself participated on Talisman, to meet
face-to-face with a number of the marginal Baha’is whose comments on Talisman had caused
most concern. One of the marginal Baha’is so approached took the statements made to him as
a threat to declare him a ‘covenant-breaker’. He decided to tender his resignation from the Baha’i
Faith in May 1996. This individual was Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the
University of Michigan. He had been a Baha’i for twenty-five years, during which time he had
travelled to the Middle East and West Africa to propagate the religion and had written in support
of his religion. On the Talisman list, however, he had voiced concerns about certain aspects of the
Baha’i administration and had moved from being a core member to becoming a marginal one. In
the fallout from the Talisman episode and Cole’s resignation, there were a few further resignations
of marginal Baha’is over the next few years.
The apostates 1996e2006
Sociologist James Beckford has noted that what in retrospect is clearly seen as an exit is often
a prolonged, ill-defined and complex process involving vacillation and negotiation. Those in the
midst of it are often not even conscious that they are engaged in leaving their religious community
(see Beckford, 1978, pp. 109e14). As with numerous other religious groups, the majority of those
leaving the Baha’i community become what Bromley calls ‘leavetakers’, exiting the religion with
6
By ‘plausibility structures’ the sociologist Peter Berger means the social base e here the Internet conversations of
a group of individuals e that constructs and maintains a particular reality e here the apostate belief system e that
makes that reality seem plausible and objective. See Berger (1969), p. 45.
7
Robert Stockman, personal correspondence, 26 September 2006.
8
http://www.angelfire.com/space/talisman/T96feb2.htm (accessed on 28 July 2006).
mixed feelings but soon completely detaching themselves from their former religion.9 Of the sixty-
six individuals who were identified in the survey as ex-Baha’is, thirty-eight give the year of their
departure. Of these thirty-eight, twenty-six (68%) departed in the period 1996e2002, which was
the peak of the post-Talisman upheaval (eleven were before and one after). It should not be sur-
mised, however, that all of these twenty-six left because of the Talisman episode. In reading their
accounts, many seem to have been unaware of the episode. Rather, it would seem that a more
general phenomenon was occurring, whereby, through the medium of the Internet, marginal
Baha’is were realising that there were others who held their opinions, so that they could build
for themselves plausibility structures that sustained them for a time. The Internet also enabled
some of them to come into contact with ex-Baha’is and with opponents of the Baha’i Faith,
thereby encouraging them to leave the religion altogether.
Most of these sixty-six individuals would be described as leavetakers. They went on to other
religions or to no religion. Ten individuals identified as apostates e they have engaged in a sus-
tained campaign against the main Baha’i community e have been active during and since the Tal-
isman episode. Two of these, K. Paul Johnson and William Garlington, are Americans who had,
like Ficicchia and MacEoin, already left the Baha’i community before 1996. Johnson, a librarian,
had been a Baha’i for five years (1969e74) and could be called a serial apostate since he then be-
came a theosophist and subsequently wrote a book ‘debunking’ Blavatsky (see Johnson, 1994). He
has now moved on to Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment. He was active
on the Talisman list as an ex-Baha’i, attacking core Baha’i beliefs and publishing an article about
the Talisman episode in Gnosis magazine (see Johnson, 1997).
Garlington, a schoolteacher, had been a Baha’i from the 1960s to the 1980s, during which time
he completed a PhD thesis on the Baha’i community in India and taught at schools in Australia
and USA. He subsequently became a Christian and participated on e-mail lists. Only recently has
he become an outright apostate. He has written The Baha’i Faith in America, published by Praeger
(2005). Of the 113 pages in the book devoted to American Baha’i history, one chapter of sixteen
pages (i.e., 14%) claims to be about the ‘priorities and issues’ affecting the American Baha’i com-
munity but instead details the major points that have been discussed by marginals and apostates
on the Internet, and these points are entirely different from the priorities and issues of the core
members. By contrast, the building of the Baha’i House of Worship in Wilmette near Chicago,
a project that was a central concern of the American Baha’i community for some fifty years, re-
ceives fewer than two pages of attention (see Garlington, 2005).
None of these four who left the Baha’i Faith before 1996 considers himself a Baha’i any longer.
Of the eight who have become apostates after the Talisman episode of 1996, three have moved
away from the Baha’i Faith completely. One, Eric Stetson, an American, was a Baha’i for four
years (1998e2002). By 2001, he had become a marginal Baha’i, declaring that he had doubts
about the authoritarian nature of the Baha’i administration. By the end of that year he was claim-
ing prophethood for himself and was setting up a website (www.bahai-faith.com). There, in early
2002, he published The Book of Restoration, with nineteen points for the reformation of the Baha’i
Faith. He also announced the setting up of the Alliance for the Reform of the Baha’i Faith,
9
I include as leavetakers rather than apostates those who post a single exit statement on the Internet that gives the
reason for their departure but are not subsequently involved in a campaign of recrimination. Some exit statements even
evince warm feelings for the religion they have left.
a group that appears never to have come into existence. Later in the same year he became a Chris-
tian, founding his own sect, called Christian Universalism. He then altered his website, dedicating
it to discrediting the Baha’i Faith and converting Baha’is to Christianity (see Stetson, 2006, 2001).
Another apostate, ‘BB’, was born into an Iranian Baha’i family resident in Australia and had
a marginal career on Talisman before resigning membership of the Baha’i community in 1996. He
declared that he still believed in Baha’u’llah but did not accept the leadership of the Universal
House of Justice. He then became involved in Sufism, but next announced a messianic claim
for himself and became a Babi e a member of the religion that preceded the Baha’i Faith in
Iran. There are still a few persons who regard themselves as Babis and as followers of Azal
(1832e1912), who claimed to be the true successor of the Bab and who opposed Baha’u’llah.
But these Azalis would probably be somewhat bemused by BB’s idiosyncratic mix of Neo-Plato-
nism, Kabbala and Sufism. Currently, he is inhabiting various marginal Baha’i e-mail lists and
Usenet groups and issuing vitriolic denunciations of the Baha’i Faith, which he terms an ‘evil
cult’. At present, he seems to be against Baha’i core members, marginals and fellow apostates
alike.
While all of the apostates described have attacked the Baha’i Faith from a liberal viewpoint,
there has been at least one Baha’i apostate who has attacked the religion from the conservative
viewpoint. ‘CC’ was an American Mormon who converted to the Baha’i Faith briefly in 1996
and then converted back to Mormonism. He requested reinstatement to the Baha’i Faith in
1998 but then withdrew his request and declared himself an ‘Independent Christian’ in 2004. Since
1996, CC has been vociferously criticising the Baha’i leadership on Usenet groups, mainly for its
supposedly liberal stance on abortion.10
The remaining five apostates are in many ways the most interesting, for they have maintained
some form of Baha’i identity even outside the Baha’i community. The first of these is Juan Cole,
who, upon his resignation from the Baha’i Faith in 1996, declared that he was a Universalist-
Unitarian. When AA closed down the Talisman list in 1996, Cole immediately set up a substitute
list on his university’s server. In 1998, he included a number of apostate issues in the text of an
academic book on Baha’u’llah that he had written (see Cole, 1998a, pp. 183e4, 196e7). In
1999, however, he stated that he did, after all, believe in Baha’u’llah but would not re-enrol in
the Baha’i community. He thus became one of those who often call themselves ‘unenrolled
Baha’is’. He has gone on to an apostate career which has included the setting up of a website
in which there is much material attacking the Baha’i institutions and the publication of three
articles in academic journals expanding on his views.
In the first of these articles, Cole’s prime aim seems to be to find ways of portraying the Baha’i
community as the kind of ‘cult’ demonised in the 1970e80s. Although the Baha’i Faith practices
no social isolation of new converts, Cole nevertheless portrays membership in the Baha’i commu-
nity as socially isolating and depicts the Baha’i administration as dictatorial and controlling e the
standard accusations made against ‘subversive’ religious movements (see Cole, 1998b).
10
His story is actually complex: see http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/Ex5.htm, http://www.utlm.org/
newsletters/no79.htm, and http://www.utlm.org/onlineresources/letters_to_the_editor/2004/2004june.htm (accessed
on 25 October 2006). The Baha’i Faith prohibits abortion when the purpose is merely to prevent the birth of an un-
wanted child but recognises that other considerations may be involved and thereby leaves the decision to the conscience
of the individuals concerned. ‘CC’ evidently thinks that this alternative provision is being interpreted too loosely.
In his second academic article, Cole turns to the other favoured accusations made against
‘cults’, that of financial irregularities, and also touches on the additional favoured accusation
of sexual improprieties (see Cole, 2000). This article again deals with the theme of authoritarian
control by the elected Baha’i institutions, as does the third article, which seeks to demonstrate
a fundamentalist take-over of the American Baha’i community in the 1990s. Cole here uses
Weberian categories to argue that the Baha’i community has moved away from ‘church-like’
behaviour towards ‘sect-like’ tendencies (see Cole, 2002). Cole has also set up an e-mail list,
H-Bahai (as part of the H-Net network of academic lists), which is represented as an academic,
moderated e-mail list. However, by using marginal and apostate moderators and by expelling
or censoring the posts of core members, he has made this list a medium for marginals and apos-
tates. The traffic on the list has dwindled to a trickle, with most apostates and marginals preferring
the freer, less academic environment of other lists and with core Baha’is setting up their own
academic lists.11
The second of these five apostates who have maintained some sort of Baha’i identity is Fred-
erick Glaysher, an American, who was a Baha’i for some twenty-five years, writing for Baha’i
magazines and teaching at community colleges. He gradually became a marginal member after
personal clashes with Iranian Baha’is in his community. He does not appear to have participated
on the Talisman list but came to prominence as a marginal Baha’i when, following the rejection
of some of his postings to the moderated Usenet group soc.religion.bahai, he started alt.reli-
gion.bahai. In 1997, he launched a campaign to set up another unmoderated group, talk.reli-
gion.bahai. Yet having succeeded in setting this up, he has largely withdrawn from active
participation in it and merely ‘spams’ the group with repeated formula e-mails decrying Baha’i
‘censorship’. He appears to have been dropped from Baha’i membership lists in 1996, when he
sent an acerbic letter demanding to be removed from the mailing lists and threatening to sue if
contacted. Yet he continued to insist that he was a full member of the Baha’i community e at
least until October 2004, when he set up his own Baha’i group, the Reform Bahai Faith. There
do not seem to have been many members of this group, and Glaysher himself announced that he
was withdrawing ‘from being central to its development, looking to a Convocation in 2006 to
resolve this and other issues’. Since the Convocation itself was cancelled, this group may no lon-
ger exist, if in fact it ever functioned (see Glaysher, 2004, 2005). Since 1998, Glaysher has run
a website where he has accumulated more than 600 pages of marginal and apostate material
(see Glaysher, 1998).
Several researchers have noted the tendency among apostates to move from fact to fantasy, re-
working the facts about the group that they have left so as to confirm their own vision of it (see,
for example Johnson, 1998). Glaysher exemplifies this phenomenon. He comes out from time to
time with what can only be called blitzkriegs of e-mails that make claims which range from the
unlikely to the bizarre. He asserts that the Universal House of Justice ordered the assassination
in 1982 of a leading American Baha’i who had in fact been a victim of street crime, and he claims
that the Baha’i community conspired with the British Baha’i scientist Dr David Kelly to get the
11
The website associated with H-Bahai has much material, mostly contributed by core Baha’is, that is of academic
value, but that material is mixed with other material clearly intended to advance the apostate view, material mostly
contributed by Cole.
British and American governments to go to war with Iraq in 2003 in order to regain access to
Baha’i holy places.12
‘DD’ is a Northern Ireland Baha’i who resigned his membership in 2002 after thirteen years as
a Baha’i and after several years as a marginal Baha’i on talk.religion.bahai. Since his resignation,
he has continued to participate on that Usenet group, becoming ever more extreme in his attacks
on the Baha’i faith.
Alison Marshall was a member of the New Zealand Baha’i community for twenty years
(1980e2000). In 1994, she and her husband, Steve, joined the Talisman discussions. Alison her-
self developed a special interest in the question of women on the Universal House of Justice.13
It appears to have been her persistent pursuit of this question and her challenging the authority
of the Universal House of Justice that led the House in 2000 to decide that ‘on the basis of an
established pattern of statements by you and behaviour and attitude on your part over the past
two or three years, you cannot properly be considered as meeting the requirements of member-
ship in the Baha’i community’ (Marshall, 2005b). As sociologist James Richardson and psy-
chologists Jans van der Lans and Frans Derks have observed, expelling a member from
a non-communal group is difficult to achieve if the member does not co-operate and can result
in negative publicity (see Richardson et al., 1986, p. 105). Marshall then became a ‘whistle-
blower’ (see Bromley, 1998c, pp. 31e5), initiating unsuccessful actions against the Baha’i com-
munity through the New Zealand Office of the Privacy Commissioner and the New Zealand
High Court. Since then, she has become a cause celebre among apostate Baha’is, and her expul-
sion is regularly cited as an example of authoritarianism. She herself has done much to publicise
her grievances, and she has set up a website that appears to be a site introducing Baha’u’llah
but that also contains much apostate material (see Marshall, 2005a). Her husband remains
a marginal Baha’i, although his own attacks on the Baha’i institutions have been even more
bitter than hers. He runs his own website, which is also a portal to marginal and apostate
material (see Marshall, 2004).
The last person to be considered in detail is Karen Bacquet, who was a Baha’i for fourteen
years until her resignation in 1999. She is somewhat atypical in that there appears to have been
no period in which she was a marginal Baha’i prior to her exit. Although she states that she
had had doubts mainly over the functioning of the Baha’i institutions, the exclusion of women
from the Universal House of Justice and the poor quality of community life in the small town
where she lived, she had been an active core Baha’i. Since exiting, she has run a web discussion
list for apostates on beliefnet.com called ‘Unenrolled Baha’is’ as well as a website that presents
her apostate positions (see Bacquet, n.d.). She has also written articles in Cultic Studies Journal,
a publication of the American Family Foundation (later the International Cultic Studies
12
See http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/uhj12-10-99.htm and http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/
Kelly.htm (both accessed on 25 June 2006). It is not clear what accusation Glaysher is making, but in any case he
has overlooked the fact that Kelly’s actions were against a reading of the intelligence data that led to war. Glaysher
has fallen out with many of the other apostates and marginals: see, for example, http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicen-
sorship/hate16.htm (accessed on 25 October 2006).
13
Women are eligible to be elected or appointed to all Baha’i institutions except the Universal House of Justice. This
exclusion is an anomaly in a religion that advocates the equality of women and men as one of its main teachings, and it
has caused a ‘crisis of faith’ for some, especially as no reason is given in the Baha’i scriptures beyond an assurance that
the reason will become clear in due course.
Association), an anti-cult group (see Bacquet, 2001), and another in Nova Religio, an academic
journal devoted to ‘alternative and emergent religions’ (see Bacquet, 2006).
Deciding who should or should not be classified as an apostate is, of course, subjective, and
there are a number of other individuals that some may have added to the list. One Australian
woman, ‘EE’, was born into a Baha’i family and then converted to Islam. She has set up a website
that, like Alison Marshall’s, appears at first to be supportive of the Baha’i Faith but that turns out
to be advocating rejection (see www.bahai-religion.org, accessed on 26 June 2006). These websites
are intended both to alert anyone who may be investigating the Baha’i Faith to what the website’s
creator regards as the hidden dark side of the Baha’i Faith and also perhaps to lure some core
members of the Baha’i community to marginality. There are also two individuals, a Canadian
Baha’i and a New Zealand Baha’i living in the Netherlands, who have both, like Marshall,
been declared not to be Baha’is because of their persistent challenges to the Universal House
of Justice. But these two do not share the ressentiment described by Scheler, and so have not
been included in the list.
Although he is also not listed in the three websites surveyed, Kai Borrmann should be mentioned
because he has also published in an academic medium. The German Borrmann was a Baha’i for
some months in 1997e98. In 2005, he published a German translation of the Kitab Aqdas, the
most important work of Baha’u’llah. The author has a poor grasp of Arabic, is unfamiliar with
Baha’i terminology, and has consulted little of the relevant secondary literature, including the
German translation of the Kitab Aqdas brought out by the German Baha’i community in 2000.
The chapter titles are flippant and are intended to be derisive of the Baha’is e for example, ‘Animal
Farm’ and ‘Abracadabra’. One is therefore surprised to find that this book is the publication of
a doctoral thesis gained from the University of Freiburg and is published in an academic series
(see Borrmann, 2005).
The apostates described here, whatever their differences, share an obsessive hatred of their for-
mer religious community. Their obsession illustrates Scheler’s concept of ressentiment, as de-
scribed by the sociologist John Hall: ‘a form of envious rage that seeks either to discredit or to
emulate the object of its affect, and sometimes, to do both’ (Hall, 1988, p. 237). True to Scheler’s
characterisation, these apostates are ‘engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against
[their] own spiritual past’.
Although these apostate groups and the very similar ‘covenant-breaker’ groups, as they are
known by core Baha’is, are often referred to as sects or splinter groups of the Baha’i Faith,
this characterisation is in a sense incorrect. These groups are not developing their own distinctive
beliefs and practices. They exist only to attack the main Baha’i community. In Scheler’s terms,
they are not living in their new faith community but are engaged only in a series of acts against
their former community. Their new community exists only as a ‘point of reference’ from which to
attack the former community. Because they exist only to vent their hatred of the core Baha’i
Faith, previous generations of ‘covenant-breakers’ have barely survived the death of their founder
members (see Cohen, 1972).
Opposition and dissidence will always arise in a large enough group, and sometimes the anger
of the dissident can be constructive. Martin Luther could channel his opposition into an alterna-
tive pathway that others could follow. But if he had restricted himself to railing against the
Roman Catholic Church, he would have been no more than a footnote to church history. Ressen-
timent is not a basis for a long-term community.
Apostate narratives
Bromley’s description of apostates gives a large role to oppositional coalitions d anti-cult

groups d who assist apostates to leave, help them construct their narratives and usually also
help them forge their subsequent apostate careers (see Bromley, 1998b, pp. 36e8). In the case
of the Baha’i apostates, it can be seen that, thanks to the Internet, they have formed their own
oppositional group to give one another support, to create plausibility structures and to encourage
others to leave the Faith. On Internet e-mail lists, marginals and apostates ‘progressively negotiate
a version of reality that make sense to them and that can be inter-subjectively confirmed by other
significant actors’ (Beckford, 1978, p. 111). Here ‘atrocity tales’ (Bromley et al., 1979) could be
told, and exits could be negotiated. Talisman and its successor e-mail groups acted as a
‘re-evaluation’ medium, by which those departing could compile ‘justificatory and excusatory
accounts’ to account for their initial joining, their remaining and their eventual departure (see
Richardson et al., 1986, pp. 106, 110). The accounts have many features that are comparable
with those renouncing any group to which they have been committed. The flavour of these accounts
is well summed up, by Arthur Koestler’s reflection on his departure from the Communist Party: ‘As
a rule, our memory romanticizes the past. But when one has renounced a creed, . the opposite
mechanism sets to work. In the light of that later knowledge, the original experience loses its
innocence, becomes tainted and rancid in recollection.. Irony, anger and shame keep intruding’
(Koestler et al., 1950, pp. 63e4).
Most apostate narratives follow a certain structural framework that has been called a ‘captivity
narrative’. Facts are often reworked to fit the expected narrative (see, for example, Johnson,
1998). As Baha’is move to the margins of the religion in the Internet age, they come into the circle
of the marginal, apostate and ex-Baha’i community. They seek to create exit narrative that meets
the expectations of this community (see Bromley, 1998c, p. 37). It is therefore not surprising that
these narratives look increasingly alike as the marginal and apostate networks become more es-
tablished, with individuals declaring that they have now realised that the real reason they were
unhappy with the Baha’i community was the standard apostate issues rather than any reason
they had originally given for exiting.14
The captivity narrative must explain why, if the Baha’i community is as terrible as apostates are
now saying it is, they remained in it. In the narratives of those joining communal NRMs, physical
and psychological isolation and restraint are the reasons often given e hence the term ‘captivity
narratives’. Since this explanation is not plausible in the case of the Baha’i community, one reason
often offered is that the convert was kept in ignorance of the true teachings or workings of the
Baha’i community (see, for example, Bacquet, 1999). But because a plea of ignorance would be
implausible and embarrassing to those apostates who are well educated and apostatised after de-
cades of membership, the accounts tend to claim that the Baha’i community became the terrible
movement that it now is only after they had joined it (see, for example, Cole, 2002).
14
See, for example, Glaysher’s early disaffection, which appears to centre on his dissatisfaction with Iranian Baha’is
and on his conviction that Baha’is are not living up to the high standards of the Baha’i teachings: see his ‘Letters from
the American Desert: 1989e1994’ at http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/LettersAmD1989-1994.htm. His later
statements focus on the core apostate themes of the authoritarian nature of the Baha’i administration and the lack of
freedom in the Baha’i community: see http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/technique.htm.
Apostate mythology
Reading the Internet postings and websites, one finds that through the telling and retelling of
stories, some factual and some exaggerated or reworked, an apostate mythology has developed.
Individuals from before the Talisman episode have been made into heroes, and a spiritual past
has been created to strengthen the apostate’s present plausibility structure.
Some of this apostate mythology goes back as long ago as the 1920s and 1930s and tells stories
of persons like Ruth White and Ahmad Sohrab, both of whom clashed with the Baha’i leadership
and were expelled. These episodes are largely factual, but nonfactual myths have also arisen, as in
the story of Fazel Mazandarani. He was an Iranian Baha’i scholar who wrote a history of the Ba-
ha’i Faith, the first part of which was published in the early 1940s. As Juan Cole reworks the
story, Mazandarani was reprimanded for contradicting official Baha’i history; he was made to
sign a prepared confession, his book was withdrawn from circulation; the publication of further
volumes of the history was prohibited, and he was silenced for the rest of his life (see Cole, 1998c).
In fact, none of these five incidents happened,15 but the myth does support Cole’s personal plau-
sibility structure as an academic who is in conflict with the Baha’i authorities.
Just as heroes have to be created to populate apostate mythology, so, too, do anti-heroes. In the
Mazandarani myth from Cole, the role of anti-hero is given to Mr Ali-Akbar Furutan, who was
the secretary of the elected national council of the Baha’is of Iran at that time and who is
portrayed as tyrannical and is called an ‘Inquisitor’ and a ‘bigot’ (see Cole, 1998c). Yet most
core Baha’is remember him as a kindly man who was always very humorous. Iranian Muslims
remember him as the person who in the 1940s gave talks on Iranian national radio about raising
children, in which he introduced the idea to Iranians that it was wrong to beat children (see
Rafati, 2005).
Apart from these events from the past, a series of episodes from the more recent American Ba-
ha’i past has become an almost universal part of many apostates’ recounting of their spiritual
world. A Baha’i study class which ran in the 1970s in Los Angeles and which, according to the
apostate account, was suppressed by the national Baha’i institutions, whereas in fact it continued
for years after the institutional intervention. Dialogue, a Baha’i magazine published in Los An-
geles, was prevented in 1988 from publishing an article that was deemed to be trying to influence
voting.16 These are among the episodes that are told and retold in apostate e-mails and on apos-
tate websites and indeed have now become so firmly a part of the apostate mythology that they no
longer need to be recounted in full. A single word or phrase is sufficient to invoke their mytho-
logical presence.
Apostate issues
The issues raised by the apostates are well characterised by Scheler: ‘The formal structure of
ressentiment expression is always the same: A is affirmed, valued, and praised not for its own
15
See Momen (1999, 2002) and e-mail correspondence with Iraj Ayman, who was a student of Fazel Mazandarani, 27
June 2006.
16
The Baha’i electoral process allows no candidates, no party platforms and no electioneering. Instead, electors are
asked to reflect on the capacities and spiritual qualities of those eligible for election.
intrinsic quality, but with the unverbalised intention of denying, devaluating, and denigrating B.
A is ‘‘played off’’ against B’ (Scheler, 1961, p. 68).
The issues raised by the apostates and marginals have tended to converge17:
1. The authority of the Baha’i institutions and individual freedom: Many of the apostates left the
religion or were expelled after a clash with the institutions of the Baha’i Faith, and so it is not
surprising that they frequently accuse the Baha’i institutions of being ‘authoritarian’ and ‘dic-
tatorial’. Core members are accused either of being fundamentalists or of being mindless fol-
lowers of the dictates of the Universal House of Justice. Other issues that regularly appear are
the Baha’i doctrine of the infallibility of the Universal House of Justice, which is ridiculed, and
the assertion that free enquiry and scholarship are discouraged and even suppressed by the
Baha’i community. Since many of the marginals and apostates are also engaged in writing
about the Baha’i Faith, the requirement to submit writings to pre-publication review is an
issue that is frequently raised. The exclusion of women from the Universal House of Justice
also regularly appears (see, especially, Bacquet, 2006).
2. Baha’i community life: Many of the apostates record clashes with Baha’is of different cultural
backgrounds, in particular Iranians. They state that they felt pressured to take part in Baha’i
propagation activities. They complain that the pressure to propagate the religion causes the
quality of community life to be neglected. Leavetakers who have gone on to become Christians
comment that they felt that the lack of a priesthood in the Baha’i community meant that there
was not sufficient pastoral care in times of crisis.
3. Baha’i teachings: A number of Baha’i teachings are frequently attacked by the apostate web-
sites. One of these is the negative attitude towards homosexuality expressed in the authorita-
tive Baha’i texts. Most apostates think that this position is outdated. The other major area
criticised, especially by those apostates who have gone on to other religions, is the teaching
that all religion has come to humanity from one divine source and thus is one in its spiritual
and ethical aspects. Therefore any differences that occur come either from the social teachings
that are adapted to the different circumstances in which each religion appeared or from rituals
and dogmas added after the time of the founder. This teaching is said to be contradicted by the
evidence of the wide disparities in the doctrines of the different religions.
The path to apostasy
The experiences described by the marginals and apostates occur precisely because of their
marginality, which is thus less effect than cause. As they express dissident ideas in their public
statements, marginal Baha’is increasingly come up against the institutions of the Baha’i Faith e
the elected and more particularly the appointed ones charged with keeping an eye out for potential
schism. The more marginal that members become, the more that they are confronted by these in-
stitutions in their guardian role. A vicious circle arises: marginal Baha’is trigger the intervention of
the Baha’i institutions, which leads to repressed hostility and rancour, the expression of which
17
Except where noted, otherwise, the data for this section are taken from the three websites listed in footnote 5 as well
as from the individual apostate and marginal sites noted previously.
triggers yet more severe intervention by the Baha’i institutions. The experience of the core members
is however that the elected institutions of the Baha’i Faith help to facilitate the activity of the Ba-
ha’is, to guide in personal and community matters, and to provide communication among the
global Baha’i community. The Counsellors and their Auxiliary Boards and assistants are experi-
enced as giving encouragement and personal advice.
By the time that marginal Baha’is have moved to apostate status, their accounts become even darker.
A religion that for the core members has peace and unity as a central teaching and that engages in con-
sultative decision-making for its administrative procedures becomes, in the apostate accounts, a fiercely
aggressive religion in which petty dictators rule and a global theocracy is the goal. Thus the experience
of the marginals and apostates is the exact opposite e a dark mirror e of that of the core members.
The sociologist Stuart Wright has pointed out a parallel between exiting a religion and getting
divorced (see Wright, 1991). When one bears in mind Scheler’s description of the apostate as one
who ‘is engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against his own spiritual past’ and who
‘remains a captive of this past, and the new faith is merely a handy frame of reference for negating
and rejecting the old’, one is reminded of rancorous divorces. For most couples, accusations and
recriminations can take up to five years to get over. But some former spouses cannot let go. Even
after a decade on more, they cannot get over the rage, depression and vindictiveness they feel. Ac-
cording to the psychologists Florence Kaslow and Lita Schwartz, two groups of former spouses
tend to fall into this second category: those with personal psychopathology and those who have
become deeply distressed during the process of separation (see Schwartz and Kaslow, 1997,
pp. 80e1, 229e30). If one uses this parallel for divorce, it is noteworthy that many of those
who become apostates have already had a considerable career as marginal Baha’is, as is not
usually the case with the Baha’i leavetakers. It may therefore be that the period of time spent
as a marginal Baha’i, with the attendant problems encountered with the Baha’i institutions,
creates the conditions of distress and ressentiment that spell future apostasy.
The effects of apostasy
These ongoing apostate attacks on the Baha’i Faith have had an effect on the way that the
Baha’i Faith is viewed by outsiders. They have appeared in a textbook on the Baha’i Faith by
Margit Warburg, who is professor of the sociology of religion in Copenhagen (see Warburg,
2003, pp. 66e8). Some neutral websites, such as www.religioustolerance.org, which is run by
the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, have adopted the apostate positions on many
issues. What occurred in Germany has been described.
What impact do apostate groups have on the religion that they leave? Since conflict is viewed
negatively by Baha’is, the pathway of contention chosen by apostates is unlikely to be effective.
Yet the changes that have been occurring in the Baha’i world can be seen to be in the direction
suggested by some apostates. In the last decade the Universal House of Justice has encouraged
Baha’is to reach out and become more open in inviting others to their meetings, particularly to
a set of ‘core activities’ e study circles, devotionals, youth groups and children’s classes. It has
encouraged the development of a ‘community of interest’ for those who are not fully committed
members (see Universal House of Justice, 2005, p. 51). There has been a move to decrease hier-
archical power structures in the Baha’i community by moving the locus for most decision-making
to groups of Baha’is at district level.18 Still, these changes have probably not arisen in reaction to
the apostates. Rather, they accord with the Baha’i teachings. Moreover, the preliminary work on
most of these changes was carried out in South America in the 1970s and was rolled out in stages
to the rest of the world from the early 1990s, before the Talisman episode had occurred.
Conclusion
In the last three decades, there has been a group of individuals who, although it has had no
great status within the Baha’i community and their numbers are small, has, partly by reason of
being articulate and well-educated and partly by virtue of the Internet, been able to create an ef-
fective platform of opposition to the Baha’i community. This article has been a study of these in-
dividuals as they have moved from being core to being marginal members and eventually to
apostates. There can, of course, be no single privileged vantage point from which to view this
complex process of marginality, leavetaking and apostasy, but the present study has suggested
a number of interesting points that would warrant further study:
1. The majority of the apostates have tried to turn the status of the Baha’i Faith from that of an
‘allegiant organisation’ to that of a ‘subversive’ one, or a ‘cult’. The issues that the apostates
raise and the reworking of their exit narratives mirror the accusations often made against
‘cults’ by the media at the height of the anti-cult hysteria in the 1970s and 1980s and
by anti-cult groups ever since. The apostates have accused the Baha’i institutions of being
authoritarian and repressive, have characterised the Baha’i community as a socially isolating
environment, and have described core Baha’is as either fundamentalists or as slavish and
mindless followers of the leadership. In some countries, such as Germany, the apostates
have been partly successful in influencing the public perception of the Baha’i community.
2. The experience of persons moving from the centre to marginality and on to apostasy can be
the opposite of that of those who remain within the core of the movement. It is thus important
to recognise that when Baha’i apostates give descriptions of tyranny and authoritarianism,
they are referring to exactly the same institutions and individuals that core members experi-
ence as providing encouragement and guidance.
3. The use of the Internet by these apostates has been both extensive and crucial. Contact with
fellow ex-Baha’is has helped them create plausibility structures to make sense of their rejection
of the faith. The Internet has enabled them to reach others who might join their cause. Some
apostates have set up websites that appear to serve core Baha’is but that in fact gradually ex-
pose the reader to apostate material. Some have even tried, unsuccessfully, to use the Internet
to set up organised splinter groups of the Baha’i Faith.
4. By drawing on figures from Baha’i history, some factual and some considerably reworked, the
apostates have created an apostate mythology, with its own heroes and anti-heroes. This my-
thology, when combined with the apostate issues, which form something of a creed that is
18
Where previously plans of action were drawn up at the world headquarters and mandated to the national and local
institutions, now plans of action are drawn up at the local level, in cycles of action loosely based on a framework sug-
gested by the world headquarters. See, for example, International Teaching Centre (2003), section 4.1, p. 17.
regularly recited; the ‘captivity narratives’ are the equivalent of salvation or conversion stories;
and the medium of the Internet, creating a community, amounts almost to the creation of a
religion of its own. One could call it an ‘implicit religion’ (see Bailey, 1983). But since this
‘religion’ has no independent life and exists only to oppose, it would perhaps be more accurate
to call it an anti-religion.
5. Although in fact only one of the apostates currently holds an academic post, apostates have
been very successful in their use of the academic media to present their views. Several have
published books and articles in respectable venues.
6. The analysis presented in this article shows that the road that leads to apostasy is usually
a long one. Clashes with the central authorities in the religion over positions, actions or strat-
egies lead to the build up of ressentiment, which is expressed in ways that, in the Baha’i com-
munity at least, leads to further clashes. Frustration leads to marginality and in turn to
rejection of the religion. The accumulated hostility can then lead to apostasy. By the time
that ressentiment has built up, there is little that the central authorities of a religion can do,
since, as Scheler has pointed out, ‘It is peculiar to ‘‘ressentiment criticism’’ that it does not se-
riously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does not want to cure the evil: the evil is merely
a pretext for criticism’ (Scheler, 1961, p. 51). If religious movements want to avoid apostasy,
they must act at an early stage in this process.
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Religion 37 (2007) 187e209

Marginality and apostasy in the Baha’i community

E-mail address: momen@northill.demon.co.uk.

The Baha’i community

The move from core to marginality

The apostates 1996e2006

Bromley’s description of apostates gives a large role to oppositional coalitions d anti-cult

The path to apostasy

The eﬀects of apostasy

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